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Mechanical pleasure seemed to satisfy her other lovers. Robert Waldegrave, her third lover, had thrown the money on the floor of her drawing room, pushed her to the square handwoven carpet, lifted her day dress and ravished her as she lay on the money, the carpet and the slats of the hard wood. And she could do nothing about it. She’d been bought and paid for. The carpet of money added no cushion to the severe blows he’d given her body. It had taken a few days, but she had gotten him in hand. He’d begged and pleaded at the end of his thirty days. By then, she had hated the man. He was nothing more than a brute in breeches.
Her satisfaction knew no bounds when she closed the door behind him.
She’d had enough of selfish lovers, inadequate lovers and quick lovers. Her former lovers had other unsavory qualities she didn’t care to remember.
Isabelle wanted something that had been beyond her reach before. She hoped to find physical fulfillment. She’d yearned and wanted these past years, only to be left unsatisfied. She had had enough and she was determined to find more. Much more.
“Yes, I am pleased. Is this how you get men to worship you? You cater to their every need?” He sauntered toward the chairs near the unlit fireplace and lazed his way downward, sinking into a comfortable position, one of his long legs stretched toward the hearth.
The fire should be lit, she thought. Dorian must be made comfortable.
“Not every need. Only the ones that men want from their mistresses,” she answered.
“And what is it that you want, sweet Isabelle?”
“What you left for me on the table in the drawing room.” Could she tell him, truly, what she wanted? Or would he find offense in the fact a whore desired him?
She didn’t remember where or when she’d first heard his name or the first time she’d seen him, just that one day he’d absorbed her every waking fantasy of her last lover. Each spring for the past five years, she’d anxiously await the first time she’d see him, even though she’d never spoken to him. Hyde Park, Bond Street, Savile Row. Sometimes just a glimpse. She never understood how she could even have a fantasy about a sexual relationship. But there it was.
And the last two years, as he had made her serious offers, she’d gotten to speak to him. Then she appreciated his true form and features.
She took a few steps to the fireplace and knelt on the carpet. She had lighted the fire in her father’s shop since she was seven. It was one of her morning duties to ensure that the shop was warm when he started work.
The firewood lay ready to be kindled. Reaching for the flint, she struck twice. Sparks scattered over the dry tinder. A small fire caught. Pushing back her hair, she leaned forward and blew into the sputtering flames.
Isabelle sensed his gaze over her back and buttocks, aware of every gesture and posture. No doubt he could see the light coloring of her flesh beneath the flimsy robe, the fire outlining the gentle curves.But not all of her surprises.
“The money is enough for you?”
“It has been.” She leaned back on her haunches and stared up at him.
“So you will retire a rich woman?” he questioned.
“Wealthy enough.”
“Wealthy enough for what?”
“Wealthy enough for a life that you take for granted. Wealthy enough to change my circumstances and those of the people I love. Perhaps I will marry now that I have means,” she said without rancor. What did a whore have to hide? The entire ton knew her profession.
What they didn’t know was that when she had lost her parents and betrothed to cholera within a week of each other, the life she might have had—a simple but safe life—had all but disappeared.
Now she had the best clothes and food. She had a nice home.
At Drury Lane, she sat in the best boxes, mingled with a very select group of British peers.
Only those peers were always men. The men who would seek her out, make their offers and express their desires. Men who jested with crude references, men who swore, smoked, gambled, whored. The only kind of men she knew.
She did not know their wives or daughters or sisters. Very often she knew their sons, as if possession of her body were a family entitlement.
The sons could be the worst. They’d tried to poach on their fathers’ whore more times than she could count. At one time, the Earl of Sanford had taken her to his country home in Somerset. What had started as a lovely weekend turned into a nightmare when the earl insisted she school his son in sexual matters. She had refused. Since then, she had kept two menservants who traveled with her, who stood sentry outside her bedroom door or whatever room she happened to occupy.
They were brothers. For the two months a year she needed them in London, she paid them handsomely and they could return to their tenant farms and their wives and children in time for the spring planting. They’d been with her seven years now. They were almost like family—family who knew her secrets and respected her anyway.
All that Isabelle had now had been obtained at a very high price, but she had reclaimed most of what she had lost. The final things she wanted required that she give up whoring, not that she would miss the forced submission and unpleasant physical contact. Or the myriad other social problems caused by her choice of professions.
“And none of your other lovers would bother to marry you?” he asked.
Oh, it wasn’t so simple. She had been in a vacuum as her life, and her brother’s, spiraled into nothingness. Prayer had been her only salvation. That and the shocking offer that had changed the course of her life.
